The National Lottery- An Eye For An Eye

The Capital Punishment debate refuses to go away, but it’s okay- I have a plan.


Introduce a referendum on Capital Punishment and the names of everyone who votes for it are recorded on little balls inside a huge lottery machine. Every time a miscarriage of justice occurs and an innocent person dies, then the lottery machine produces a winner at random. The winner will then be executed to redress the balance. The execution could be televised and called “National Lottery- An Eye For An Eye”. I’d like to see someone with a hint of mischief host it, someone who’d probably make an inappropriate joke with the victim. Michael Barrymore, maybe.

Miscarriages of justice with multiple executions would be like a rollover with multiple winners, imagine the excitement to see if you were going to be lucky that night. The odds would probably better than 14 million to 1. And not only would you get fifteen minutes of fame but your thirst for murderous retribution would be satisfied in full.

I’m going to phone Channel Five in the morning.






These notes were originally published on 19 April, 2008 at theraffishdandy.wordpress.com

Tonight’s the Night, whether you like it or not

Possibly apocryphal this but what the hell, it's a great story:






Following the success of 'Harvest' Neil Young suffered two sad losses in quick succession (his roadie and a member of his band) and made the tormented but great LP 'Tonight’s The Night'. On the following tour Young would play the 'Tonight’s The Night' record in full and in sequence. When the crowd- who were mostly there to hear the more commercial and widely-loved 'Harvest' tracks- became restless he appeased by them saying “if you bear with me I’ll play the album in full, then I’ll play some songs you’ve heard before”.


The crowd stayed and when Young finished the tracks from 'Tonight’s The Night' he did as promised and played some songs they'd heard before.


He played them 'Tonight’s The Night' all the way through again.

Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

It's mad this. I love it, but I'm aware of how mad it is. Veteran B-Movie actor Eddie Constantine reprises a regular role as private detective Lemmy Caution in a Jean-Luc Godard film set in the future. Bonkers. Brilliant.



As with any film Godard makes the emphasis is very much on realism. And so you have a sci-fi film noir thriller set in a dystopian future (is there any kind of future in the movies?) which is filmed in mid-60s Paris featuring actors wearing contemporary clothing and driving contemporary cars. In fact, if it weren't for the dialogue you would have no idea that this was set in the future. It could almost be a French version of What's Up Tiger Lily? And yet, it is very realistic because Godard chose the most futuristic parts of Paris and Coutard shot them in such a way that it works. We're not talking a Buck Rodgers future here but a terrifying vision of a very real, very near future. The film begins by telling the viewer that it is "24.17 Oceanic Time" which will really, really strike a chord with anyone who has read Orwell's contribution to the genre 1984. Or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. And those source materials are a pretty important touchstone for the film referenced throughout- with the omniscient central government, dehumanised population and deliberate shrinking of the language. It is telling for me that Godard's sci-fi film is the antithesis of the gaudy, style-over-substance, effects and costume-heavy movies which dominate the genre. Strip away the trappings, he is saying, and there must be more to the film than mere window-dressing. He must have hated the Hollywood of the last three decades.



The film opens with Lemmy Caution arriving in Alphaville under the assumed identity of a newspaper reporter from Figaro-Pravda (that is simply delicious by the way). The wonderful Misraki B-movie soundtrack accompanies Caution as he enters an Alphaville hotel, checks in, gets the lift to his floor, negotiates the winding corridoors and arrives at his room. This is all achieved with one tracking shot including the lift sequence (the camera goes up in one glass elevator, Caution in another alongside it) it takes four minutes in full. Amazing. I can't emphasise that enough.

Alphaville is a harsh, cold, loveless and remorseless place. Five years on from À Bout de Souffle,which was in part a love letter to the city of Paris, Godard's view appears to have completely changed. Caution's disdain for Alphaville simply gives voice to Godard's for Paris: "Everything weird is 'normal' in this damn town" he says at one point. What Paris is and what it is becoming informs much of the movie thematically. This also makes Constantine's uncomfortable performance work really well, he isn't a natural or polished and his clunky accented delivery and hesitant body language is perfect for the role of discomfited outsider. He is taking the whole thing super-seriously as a spy thriller and seemingly ignoring the philosophical or futuristic bits that he doesn't quite get. It's a great case of a Director using an actor brilliantly in spite of the actors limitations, I love Eddie Constantine in this (and, in the interests of balance, I should say that he also does a pretty good job in The Long Good Friday). Godard makes the most of Constantine, his 'interesting' face and world-weary manner- he is in almost every shot, certainly every scene.



And yet he isn't the key figure in the film. The film is, in many ways, a love letter to Anna Karina. From the first moment that she appears- accompanied by a beautiful score for strings and lit with great sensitivity- she is objectified as being of almost preternatural beauty. Her performance justifies this treatment too, she is sensational in this. The moment at the climax of the film where she says for the first time and with a new understanding of the gravity of her words "I love you" is one of those heart-meltingly rare cinema moments that stay with you. She speaks as if these are the first words she has ever said, the music swells, fin.

Truly beautiful.

Love is one of the things which can save Alphaville. During the execution scene- a man is executed for acting illogically- he wept when his wife died, his final words are: "Listen to me normal ones! We see a truth that you no longer see. A truth that says the essence of man is love and faith, courage and tenderness, generosity and sacrifice. Everything else is an obstacle put up by your blind progress and ignorance!". The execution itself is odd (the prisoners are shot by firing squad beside a swimming pool and retrieved by synchronised swimmers who are applauded wildly by spectators) and this bizarre method is in keeping with the bizarre reason for the execution. Godard is mocking the concept (and indeed the conceit) of this future. He goes further in the following scenes and reveals that in the face of dehumanisation, poetry is the answer. When Alphaville's super computer (and by the way Alphaville's super computer has a voice like a frog vomiting) interrogates Lemmy Caution, it asks "do you know what turns darkness into light?" to which he responds poetry. And reading a book of the poet Éluard's poetry entitled 'The Capital of Pain' (presumably chosen for the title as much as the content) reawakens the humanity within Karina's character. Yet it is here that the film falters to a degree, as with all of Godard's work, there is a heavy philosophical element and the longer-than-it-seems sequence on anti-linguistic theory ("unless words change their meanings and meanings change their words"- that kind of stuff) is a step that the film could really do without. The film isn't serious enough to do such conceits justice- that's my feeling anyway.

Aside from that interlude (which I would probably have tolerated much better if I hadn't been too tired to understand it all) this is typical Godard, he doesn't piss about with unnecessary pauses, he just puts relevant scenes and events on screen in an innovative way subverting everything which has gone before. He even depicts a fight in still photos to avoid unnecessary and untidy camerawork. A film about the resurrection of tenderness in a world that had forgotten about love.

Top 5 English divers

Ashley Young
Steven Gerrard
Michael Owen
Andy Johnson
Wayne Rooney

They're a Weird Mob (1966)

And, to be fair, that's a weird film.

It's not surreal or intricate or confusingly plotted or visually curious, it's weird because I don't know why anyone would ever make a film like it. It's a culture-clash comedy between a charming and stylish Italian immigrant and his rough and ready Sydney-based workmates with their singlet and shorts uniform, with a minor love-interest angle to keep the ladies happy. I'm not preaching sexism, that's the kind of thinking that appears to be behind this film.

Walter Chiari is utterly engaging as the fish-out-of-water Italian and his charm sustained me through the first hour but there was always the nagging thought in my head "when is the story going to start?". It never did. In the end I resigned myself to the fact that, following the furore caused by his magnificent 'Peeping Tom', Michael Powell had decided to never risk offending anyone again. What follows, therefore, is a near-two hour advertisement for Australia as a place of easy manners, friendly locals, and a hard-working, hard-drinking culture where men are men and women aren't. If you want an easy-going film that uses stereotypes and language-barrier gags as shorthand means of dispensing with character development and narrative construction, then this film is the one for you.

Michael Powell's visual brilliance is kept under wraps but for a couple of moments as he plays it safe and for laughs. He is a fantastic director, but this must stand as his poorest film that I've seen. It isn't bad, just inconsequential and more than a little dull.

My career as an international footballer

Some time in the mid-90s I wrote to the Falklands Islands (can’t remember who but they didn’t have an FA) and said that I qualified to represent them as a British citizen- which is true- and that I’d played for a couple of years in the lower leagues- which most certainly isn’t.

I figured that they had a population of a couple of thousand. Half of them women, most too old or too young, many of whom would have never played the game- that didn’t leave a lot of competition. My thinking was I had to have a chance to become a fully-fledged football international and maybe even play in something like a World Cup qualifier. I could surely make the squad as cover…surely!

They replied- I kid you not- that they would be happy for me to join their squad and asked if I knew any other good players who might want to play for them. I couldn’t believe it, they weren’t even asking me to go for a trial! Happy days indeed. The letter proceeded to say that they had no fixtures planned and that, as they couldn’t afford to join FIFA, they didn’t know when they would have. Oh, and that I’d have to pay my own travel there and back if they did arrange a game. They did, though, offer to put me up in someone’s house if I went.

I never did go and, to the best of my knowledge, they’ve never played a game. My career as an interational footballer was thus short-lived and remarkably undecorated.

Daniel Hannan

I note with wearying inevitability that self-publicising Tory scrote Daniel Hannan has got his ruddy slapheaded gurning visage in the papers again by bigging up ex-Conservative MP and all-round fascistic thickshit Enoch Powell. Oh how fucking surprising. This prick has been shouldering his way remorselessly into the public eye for as long as I can remember now with his stage-managed controversy and tedious flesh-pressing. He is the political equivalent of those sad fuckers in your local pub who set fire to their farts just for the fleeting frisson of infamy. I tell you, if I looked like a shaved stoat dressed up as a parody of Bertie Wooster the last place I would want to be is in where people can point at me and laugh till they micturate, but this completely amoral flaccid cock positively laps it up like a coprophiliac in a sewage farm.

Now that Boris Johnson is safely under house arrest as the titular Mayor of London, Hannan clearly sees a niche for a bumbling, privileged twat who isn’t afraid to drop a bollock or two in public if it will get him a thirty second slot on The World At One and build towards the much-coveted role of out-of-touch posho being humiliated by the commoners on Have I Got News For You. Well more power to your elbow Hannan; you might be an odious, cretinous, slimy, lickspittle cunt but at least you’re causing Call Me Dave to quickly gather together a couple of focus groups and see how well the idea of fascism would play with the public at large. The fucker might even learn something.

Keep it up cunt-face.

These notes were originally published on August 27, 2009 at modelanswers.wordpress.com

À Bout de Souffle (1960)

The intention I have behind these notes is to remind myself what I loved and hated and didn’t understand and wanted to remember about these films. As such, this note is superfluous- I love this film and know it frame by frame. Funny how a film that has been imitated to death and is almost fifty years old can still seem fresh and invigorating. Unlike most of the films I watch, I’ve read a bit about this one. I know, for example, that the spliced sequences on the Champs, in the taxi, in the bedroom, on the ride into Paris were a financially-motivated innovation. I know that the sirens which drown out dialogue were retained to avoid wasting film. It doesn’t matter, though, they work as representations of reality and as artistic statements. The whole thing works.



Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo)’s opening line “After all, I’m an arsehole” sets the tone beautifully. From there he embarks on a crime-spree that is motivated neither by malice nor desperation, but because it is his default setting. He is immune to remorse. From car theft to extortion to mugging to the murder of a policeman he doesn’t hesitate and doesn’t bat an eyelid. He is amoral and thoroughly ambivalent to society moving instinctively according to his code “informers inform, burglars burgle, murders murder, lovers love”. Indeed he even considers the love he has for Jean Seberg’s Patricia to be something to regret. He is just a mixed-up kid, aping Bogart and playing at life. To Michel we are what we are by nature and we simply have to follow our course without deviation, to him it is that simple. He speaks of his love for and disdain for France and the French and Americans and other things, but the words ring hollow. Belmondo speaks these sentences whilst emoting others (he really gets behind “never use the brakes. As old man Bugatti used to say ‘I build cars to run not to stop” and you can see that ‘run not stop’ ethos lives within him throughout the film). When Godard positions him in front of a poster that shouts ‘live dangerously until the end’, Michel’s raison d’être is encapsulated in a moment. Building the film around a character as reprehensible as Michel Poiccard (strip away Belmondo’s charm and what’s left isn’t pretty) would have made for a very difficult and perhaps shallow viewing experience- indeed the storyline can probably be comprehensively summarised in a sentence. This is why Patricia is so important. She too is a mixed-up kid, she too has a kind of dubious morality and she too offers platitudes and opinions without conviction, but she is redeemable and fundamentally good whereas Michel is fundamentally rotten. Her emotional wrangling (“I don’t know if I’m unhappy because I’m free or free because I am unhappy”) is an important counterpoint to Michel’s animal instinctiveness. Her role is also important as it permits Godard to question such things as the female role (French feminism at this time was a vital political force), infatuation, mortality, love and sensuality and- perhaps most importantly- predestination and happiness. On a philosphical basis, there is a tremendous amount in À Bout de Souffle to consider.



The thing which I love about À Bout de Souffle probably more than any other film, though, is its cool. I know that it’s childish to label something cool or even to love something because you think it’s cool but I don’t care- maybe I’m just a mixed-up kid too! The look of the film whether by pragmatic inspiration or design is, there’s no other word for it, breathtaking. Jim Jarmusch- who I love dearly- built a career on this stuff. The whole film is shot on a hand-held and allows Godard and his cinematographer Raoul Coutard (the only men involved in shooting the film) to focus in on faces and follow them around- there is a marvellous scene in the Travel Agents as they firstly follow Michel as he approached the desk, then Michel and Tolmatchoff (Richard Balducci), then Michel again and as he leaves we follow the arriving Detectives as they repeat his journey just a step behind him. The film also utilises high-angle shots from rooftops and balconies showing Michel and Patricia in the context of the busy city. Their story is at once immediate and yet one of many thousands of stories. Another aspect of the spliced scenes is the insistent urgency that they give the story, along with the great jazzy soundtrack- and in particular the piano/trumpet refrain- by Martial Solal, a real zest and vigour. I honestly can’t speak highly of this film, I love it in more ways than my paltry descriptive powers will allow me to express. It means the world to me.

Finally Sunday! / Vivement Dimanche! (1983)

"so sweet and touching a love letter to Hitchcock"

I've got such a list of films that I haven't made notes on that I'm having to rattle through them at great speed. I'm not even going to mention Jules et Jim, which I saw recently and again at the weekend. I think I've got the balance right but I do find my notes useful, so it's a shame. I saw Jules et Jim because speciality French movie channel CineMoi had advertised a showing of Vivement Dimanche! but decided to show the 1962 classic instead. I started watching and couldn't stop but I couldn't help being miffed as I'd missed the chance to see the one Truffaut that I haven't seen and don't own and then a little digging revealed that I do own it! It was released in Australia as Confidentially Yours, though having seen the film I can't see why, and was part of a box set I picked up some years back. So, I got to see a Truffaut double-bill. "Who's the Daddy now?"

This is smashing. It is Truffaut working through his Alfred Hitchcock fixation (the Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews make fantastic reading) by making a perfectly-executed homage. This being a (pseudo) Hitchcock it revolves around a man who is accused of a crime that he may or may not have committed and his attempts to elude the authorities for long enough to clear his name. It's suspension-of-disbelief time of course, this is a film where the police have set up road-blocks and search the city for a man who is sat comfortably in his office which they've neglected to check. But it doesn't matter, the film is so sweet and touching a love letter to Hitchcock that you can let anything go.

Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the innocent victim of circumstances- by turns confused, afraid and indignant- with the glorious Fanny Ardant as the secretary who is secretly in love with him and does his investigating for him whilst he is ensconced in the office (a nice nod to Rear Window). Both are excellent and their chemistry is lovely to watch.

But it's the Hitchcock motifs that matter the most. The film is immediately suspenseful from the shooting of Massoulier which opens and is undercut throughout with a tense string soundtrack which is tremendously reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann's best. There are images of telephones ringing in empty rooms, scenes shot from outside through windows, the first person the couple suspect is dramatically revealed to be a Priest, Fanny Ardant's Barbara zips from city to city looking for clues, she witnesses a murder but can only see the murderer's legs, the audience is manipulated to believe then disbelieve then rebelieve in Trintignant's character...

I don't believe that this focusing upon the Hitchcock angle is doing the film down at all, it is certainly a tense but enjoyable thriller in its own right and the reverence it shows for the Godfather of all modern thrillers is a strength. There is also a brief reference to Kubrick's Paths Of Glory- a film which was once banned in France- and, as this was to be Truffaut's last film it is almost as if he is saying goodbye and expressing his thanks to great filmmakers from before. Like when Bob Dylan played 'Song For Woody' at his 40th Anniversary tribute concert.

It's far from flawless but I loved it. Can't wait to see it again. 7/10

Top 5 TV Catchphrases

Are you having a laugh? Is he having a laugh?
Sheeeeeeeiit
Nice to see you, to see you nice
Look at what yer could've won
I didn't get where I am today

Top 5 ex-soldiers

Major Gowen
Jimmy from 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'
Elvis Presley
The bloke in Dead Man's Shoes
All of the A-Team (except the female journalist in the first series)

Top 5 non-obvious Fab Four tracks

Hey Bulldog
Things We Said Today
And Your Bird Can Sing
Happiness is a Warm Gun
I'm Down

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Being a black and white caper-gone-bad movie with a gang led by a recently released prisoner with a plan and a largely silent robbery sequence, I couldn’t help comparing this to Jules Dassin’s marvellous Rififi and of course it pales in comparison. But this pre-dates Rififi by five years and is a damn good example of the genre in its own right. In fact, I doubt I’d have Rififi to marvel over (or Kubrick’s The Killing for that matter) without this seminal movie.



John Huston directs a strong cast well bringing out excellent performances from Sterling Hayden (forever known to me as ‘the cop that Michael whacks’ despite his long and varied CV), Louis Calhern and especially from a scene-stealing Sam Jaffe. The minor characters stand up well- including an early Monroe performance- and add colour and depth, from the hunchbacked James Whitmore to the lip-licking greed of Barry Kelley. The story moves along at pace with intelligence covering all bases and adding depth and clarity to the characters’ actions and putting the later plot developments into context.

My only real qualms about the movie are the neatness of its conclusions- things are a little too convenient for the investigating officers, hardened criminals wilt under little pressure etc- the hammered-home pro-police propaganda speech from John McIntire which is very much out of keeping with the tone of the film and the genre and the happy-sad ending which really didn’t do it for me.

So, flawed but recommended. Noteworthy for its influence on the Fim Noir genre and smashing as a film in its own right.

I Confess (1953)

There is nothing Hitchcock loves more than a man who is under suspicion for a crime he didn’t commit. He probably loves it even more than he loves melodramatic film titles, which is- as the Velvettes would tell you- really saying something. The wrongly accused man is his key theme (three years later another of his many films on the theme would be called simply The Wrong Man) and the way it is used in this film could have made it the best of all of his takes on the concept.



Montgomery Clift plays Father Logan who is not only under suspicion and entirely innocent but he heard the guilty man’s confession and he knows who the real murderer is but is bound by his vows and cannot say- even in the face of the gallows! It’s a great concept, truly it is and Monty Clift gives an extraordinarily tortured and yet restrained performance as Logan. I don’t know too much about Clift, other than he died prematurely in sad circumstances and that his homosexuality had led him into alcohol and drug dependency, but I do know that when he was young he had it all- he was beautiful (not sexy or handsome but actually beautiful) and talented with a wonderful voice. I bet he could even play darts if he’d put his mind to it. In I Confess we are seeing the young, pre-accident Clift and his ability to express a thousand thoughts with fleeting expressions or a shift of his eyes is striking. The scene where he hears O. E. Hasse’s confession is dazzling. Hitchock knew he had something special here and he made the most of it. It’s a wonderfully memorable scene. What follows from there succeeds where it does because the audience is totally with Clift and that’s the hook.

The downside of this concept, however, is that the underlying uncertainty in Hitchcock’s other great innocent suspect films cannot happen here. We never truly know until the climax whether Rear Window’s Lars Thorwald really killed his wife or not, but we know that Clift is innocent without any lingering doubts about whether a further twist awaits us. We also know- as seasoned movie-goers- that there is not a chance in a million that an innocent priest would be sent to the gallows in a 1953 Hollywood film. If that was the ending, the film simply wouldn’t have been made. And that kind of kills the suspense. My wife’s uncle says that he’ll never watch a James Bond film “there’s no point” he claims “if you know that he isn’t going to die”. And that’s a little of what happens here. That element of doubt is missing and so as great a performance as Clift might give, it still isn’t quite enough. I also didn’t think that Dimitri Tiomkin’s score aided the process as it should. The best advert for the talents of Bernard Herrmann are the Hitchcock films which he didn’t score, that’s always been my opinion. Tiomkin’s music is competent without adding colour to what is on screen, it lacks magic.



One of the interesting things about this film, though, is the way that Hitchcock presents it visually. This is almost a film noir with it’s exaggerated shadows and many dramatic low-level outdoor shots of Quebec buildings. The noir motif of light streaking in through venetian blinds was brilliantly played upon in the confession box scene too- Hitchcock had great fun there. There is even an extended flashback sequence, another noir staple. And yet one of the things a noir needs- at least according to my understanding and opinions vary- is a degree of tension and conflict that is the staple of the vast majority of the great man’s work and yet is sorely missing here. Clift’s stoical determination to uphold the sanctity of the confession box is so great that he doesn’t even appear to try and push Keller (the real murderer) into confessing. And this lack of tension makes the film sag, especially around the extended flashback scene. I remember thinking ‘this goes on a bit’ only halfway through that, by contrast the courtroom scenes flashed by in an eye-blink. The change in Keller’s demeanour through the course of the film from distraught to relieved to cocksure should have ramped up the tension just as Clift’s turmoil and fear should have. But it didn’t. While Clift is angst-ridden and Keller’s manipulative remorselessness should make for spectacular exchanges, their scenes together are flat.

And none of the sub-plots really add to the drama, though at the same time they don’t offer relief either, they merely exist alongside the main story. Ruth and Pierre Grandfort’s marriage may be going through the wringer and Alma Keller may be struggling to hold it together, or even to want to hold it together, for her husband but the viewer isn’t grabbed by these. As extensions on the false accusation/trust and honesty theme they are simply mentioned, they aren’t explored or even properly introduced. This is Hitchcockian thriller without the trademark Hitchcockian thrills.

We get some wonderful little sequences like the party scene opening on a glass and then opening out to reveal that it is being balanced on a man’s head as part of a party game, but they aren’t sufficient to do more than remind you that this is Hitchcock, but not vintage Hitchcock. It’s a shame because Hasse, the ever-reliable Karl Malden, Dolly Haas as Alma Keller and Montgomery Clift all deserved a better film for their efforts. Good, not great.